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EDITORIAL: Combating bullying is everyone’s fight

In 2011, New Jersey enacted a tough anti-bullying law. After the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a Ridgewood native and Rutgers University freshman who jumped off the George Washington Bridge shortly after being secretly videoed by his roommate during a romantic encounter with another man, the legislation moved quickly through the State House. While the reasons for suicide are complicated and unique from person to person, legislators and Gov. Chris Christie recognized that bullying often is a catalyst for an irreversible decision.

EDITORIAL: Combating bullying is everyone’s fight

In 2011, New Jersey enacted a tough anti-bullying law. After the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a Ridgewood native and Rutgers University freshman who jumped off the George Washington Bridge shortly after being secretly videoed by his roommate during a romantic encounter with another man, the legislation moved quickly through the State House. While the reasons for suicide are complicated and unique from person to person, legislators and Gov. Chris Christie recognized that bullying often is a catalyst for an irreversible decision.

Yet despite that new law, bullying has not waned in New Jersey. In Rockaway Township, for instance, bullying incidents tripled during the last school year. As Gannett New Jersey reporter Abbott Koloff found, out of 33 bullying investigations during the 2016-17 school year, 14 were confirmed to be bullying by the state law’s definition. In the previous year, there were 13 reported bullying investigations with three confirmed incidents.

In June, 12-year-old Mallory Grossman of Rockaway died by suicide, after she repeatedly was told by a group of girls that she was a loser without friends, according to her parents, who held a press conference last week to announce they are suing the school district for allegedly failing to respond to complaints that Mallory was bullied at school and on social media.

They claim they repeatedly asked school officials to protect their daughter in the months leading up to her suicide. Their daughter’s grades were dropping, and, according to her parents, Mallory eventually was told by the other students, “Why don’t you kill yourself?”

What happened to Mallory is not unique. As Koloff reported, since 2014, the national suicide rate has doubled for children between the ages of 10 and 14. While some experts claim the rise in reported bullying incidents is a result of better reporting, suicide numbers point to a different conclusion. If more children are ending their lives, efforts to combat bullying and help at-risk children see choices beyond suicide are failing.

Children may not be crueler than a generation ago, but they have tools their parents could not imagine when they were 12. Any teen can easily use social media, but the cognitive skills to fully understand the effects of shaming and humiliating peers have not developed.

Schools need to become more aggressive in teaching students about the dangers of bullying, whether it is face to face or over a social media site. We also question whether schools should be required to give parents more information on the course of action taken after a bullying complaint is lodged. Every child’s privacy is important, but parents have a right to know exactly how a school responded to a bullying complaint.

Children walk through a digital, ethically challenged jungle every day. Laws go only so far. It takes enforcement. It takes education. It takes action on the part of all of us — children and adults — to avoid remaining passive when they see bullying.